You write, "We don't... create research findings that say anything about the existence of free will." By "we" do you mean psychologists in general? What about the work of Libet and others?

See here: http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/brainstorm/200804/the-greatest-mag...

"Benjamin Libet asked people to press a button at a time of their choosing, and to note the exact moment they chose to press it. Meanwhile measurements of electrical activity in their brains indicated that their brains actually set their fingers in motion a full third to half a second before the subjects had any conscious awareness of what they were about to do. More recent fMRI work published last week in Nature Neuroscience shows that the brain makes up its mind whether to press a button with the left or right hand up to 7 seconds before you're aware of your decision. The machine knows what you're doing before you do."

Hi Matthew,
Thanks for the question.

Yes, I mean psychologists in general, and certainly neuroscientists in particular. I wrote an earlier blog where I address Libet's work, among others (remembering that blogs are very short pieces and never do full justice to the topic at hand). You can find that posting at Where there's a will, there's . . .

Libet's research does not address whether there is free will or not. It does speak to the notion of unconscious processes, and of course, we have many of these. Lack of awareness of some processes is not the same thing as a lack of free will as humans.

In my graduate classes, we examine this research and the assumptions behind it. It's always interesting to me to see how much is made of fMRI studies, correlational data for the most part, and the sweeping conclusions that are made based on it.

For the most part, I think it's part of the "pendulum swing" in the discipline that is rediscovering the unconscious (automatic processes) and then swinging past any sense of reason about what this might mean to the conclusion that everything is automatic (and that conscious choice an illusion). As I wrote in my reply to this recent discussion of "free will," our research simply does not provide the kind of evidence to reject either theory. In fact, our interpretations of the data and the way we do our research really just reveals the basic paradigm of our beliefs. For eliminative materialists, data like Libet's and other fMRI studies support their beliefs, but the evidence does not refute the opposition. Taken together, all of the studies help us understand more clearly how automatic vs. conscious (deliberate) processes are processed in the brain.

I hope this helps clarify my meaning here, again recognizing how brief both blog posts and replies are.
tim

I certainly think it's unfalsifiable, yes, but more importantly, our psychological theories must be reflexive. That is, they have to apply to each of us, including the theorists. Perhaps it's my own failure of imagination to understand a deterministic psychology that would include our exchange here as part of that unconscious, deterministic view.

As I quoted Deci and Ryan in the post I referred to above, it depends how we think about "will." They write, ". . . the exercise of will and autonomy is different from being an initial cause or stimulus to action. It rather concerns the capacity to effectively evaluate the meaning and fit of potential actions with one's overarching values, needs, and interests"

A reflexive psychology must, necessarily I argue, account for this perspective as well as more ancient (and perhaps mistaken) notions of free will.
tim